Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove Turns 50!

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the release of Dr. Strangelove, we’re rerunning this article on Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, which originally appeared during our Kubrick week in November 2011.

Stanley Kubrick had already well established his reputation as a maverick genius by the time he began work on 1964’s Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, as well as his equally powerful reputation for polarizing audiences. Although often named among the greatest American filmmakers, Kubrick has equally vociferous detractors—many of whom were the studio executives who had to sign the checks to pay for his visions and were treated like ATMs for their trouble by the maestro—and even his most ardent defenders (i.e. me from about ages 16-30) have to admit one or two of his features were more interesting than good.

All that equivocation goes out the window when discussing Kubrick’s first semi-foray into science-fiction, though: Dr. Strangelove is one of the greatest movies ever made and that’s all there is to it.